June 5, 2013, 8:23 pm

by G. H. Peiris
Continued from yesterday

Devolution and Empowerment in India

In a rebuttal of my suggestion that the implementation of the B-C Pact of 1957 or the document produced by the ‘Political Parties Conference’ of 1986 could have had outcomes different from that visualised by him, Dr. DJ has produced another classic example of superficial understanding of political affairs. It runs as follows:

"Well, let the reader judge the lucid realism of that scenario bearing in mind, however, that ‘to go by Indian experience’ as Prof Peiris says we should, nowhere has a region seceded because an agreement for autonomy was arrived at and implemented. On the contrary, every serious scholar agrees that it is precisely the flexible accommodation of regional (sub) nationalisms that has permitted the vastly diverse India to stay together".

Please take a careful look at this exhibition of realism. Now, if a "serious scholar" is defined as a person subscribing to the view that it was the successful accommodation of sub-national demands through territorial devolution that kept India intact, one cannot find fault with what Dr. DJ has said. Unfortunately for him such a definition of "serious scholarship" is tenuous. There happens to be many eminent Indian scholars with impeccable academic credentials and intellectual integritySecurity perspectives of

province-based devolution: A reappraisal who admit that territorial devolution has often failed to fulfil the demands of sub-national group interests, that there have been many instances of devolution aggravating rather than diffusing ethnic rivalry, and that, what had held together the Indian union more effectively than all else is the overwhelming military might of the central government of India. This is why one of the leading authorities of comparative politics (Horowitz, 1985) whom I cited earlier has concluded that: "Where central authority is secure, as in India, the appropriate decisions can be made and implemented by the centre. But where the very question is how far the writ of the centre will run, devolution is a matter of bilateral agreement, and an enduring agreement is an elusive thing" (emphasis added).

No, I think Dr. DJ should read more, much more, before he could make authoritative pronouncements on Indian experiences. He should read about what happened in the period leading up to, during, and after the Khalistan uprising (one of the closest parallels one could find to our Eelam uprising). He should familiarise himself with the scholarly writings on that misty but persistently turbulent ‘North-East’ of India which, despite India’s admittedly laudable claims of democratic governance, is physically accessible to outsiders only if they obtain Delhi’s permission to go past the Siliguri Corridor. He should learn about the never ending blood-letting between different tribal groups and between the ‘natives’ and the ‘immigrants’, the innumerable ‘liberation armies’ and their outbursts of murderous havoc, and the periodic Delhi-directed ‘cordon, search and liquidate Jawan operations’ that take place virtually unknown to the world outside except through the writings of Indian scholars and journalists. Further, Dr. DJ would do well if he were to try and grasp the extent to which devolution has kept a large part of Kashmir within the Indian Union; And, perhaps more important than all else, the disastrously negative impact of devolution on both India’s relations with its neighbours and Hindu-Muslim relations in India.

Swiss Confederacy Model

Dismissing my assertion that, given Sri Lanka’s size and form, province-based devolution is unnecessary for Sri Lanka on the grounds that "size has nothing to do with it", Dr. DJ refers once again to the musings of young Bandaranaike and the not so young Leonard Woolf. My reference to the basic geographical configuration of Sri Lanka as a consideration of relevance was not due to my being unaware of small federations. Apart from Switzerland, there are five other federations ? the tiny archipelagic Micronesia, Comoros, St. Kitts & Nevis, and the lose collection of sheikdoms comprising the United Arab Emirates ? that are much smaller than Sri Lanka. But in all these there are the geographical peculiarities that account for the existing structures of government.

The origin of the ‘Swiss Confederation’ could be traced back to the formation of an association of settlements in three Alpine localities referred to as waldstatte ("forest states") in the 13th century. Its survival and growth in the centuries that followed could be explained mainly with reference to the desire on the part of the people inhabiting this rugged mountainous area, in settlements physically isolated from one another, to collectively safeguard their independence from the powerful kingdoms and empires that rose and fell in the adjacent parts of Europe (Austria, Italy and France) periodically extending their control over parts of the Swiss Alps. By the time the Swiss Confederacy assumed its present geographical configurations in the mid-19th century, it covered about 16,000 sq. miles of territory.

While the persistent desire for independence and, in the 20th century, neutrality in the context of the world at war, provided the main impulses for integrity and cohesion of the Swiss confederation, its locational centrality in Europe, periodic invasions (accompanied by migration) from adjacent areas, and the physically disparate nature of its settlements, contributed to the persistence of sharp cultural (ethnic) diversities within its territory. A major ingredient of this diversity is language. About two-thirds of the Swiss population speak German; one-fifth, French; one-tenth, Italian; and one-hundredth, Rhaeto-Romanic. The Swiss population is also divided in roughly equal proportions on the basis of religion ? Protestant and Catholic.

The only serious threat to the integrity of the Swiss confederacy occurred as far back as 1847 with the formation of a league referred to as ‘Sonderbund’ consisting of the Roman Catholic cantons, evidently in violation of the Swiss constitution of that time. The ensuing conflict was suppressed by the federal troops the following year, paving the way for the emergence of a stronger central government. This transformation acquired formal expression with the promulgation of a new constitution in 1874 which converted the existing association of cantons into a unified federal state.

The basic territorial unit of the Swiss Confederacy is the ‘Commune’ of which there are about 3,000. Communes range in size from less than a tenth of a square mile to about 100 square miles, and are vested with considerable autonomy in many matters that directly concern daily life. For instance, the larger communes have their independent law enforcement institutions. The communes fall within one or another of the 26 ‘Cantons’ or ‘Demicantons’ into which the confederacy is divided. Each canton has almost the entire gamut of institutions of government. There is a close spatial correspondence between clusters of cantons and the distribution of the linguistic groups. If this is what Sri Lanka needs, OK, lets empower the Pradeshiya Sabhas, being cautious, however, of the criminally minded ‘neo-ratemahattayas’ and the ‘neo-arachchis’ who often tend to hold sway at that level.

Switzerland has for long enjoyed a high level of political stability, remaining free of violent inter-group conflict. It is regarded as an example of extraordinarily successful federalism in the sense that, while it has preserved its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and neutrality in external relations over several centuries of periodic political upheavals in Europe, since about the mid-19th century, it has also averted internal conflict and accommodated popular participation of all its ethnic groups in the affairs of government.

Given these extraordinary circumstances, could there be any pragmatically worthwhile suggestion that the type of territorial devolution in the Swiss confederacy would be appropriate for Sri Lanka? Of Oxford returnee Bandaranaike I have said enough. Leonard Woolf, it is said, was far too dreamy even for Virginia. Attempting to replicate the unique circumstances of successful territorial devolution in Sri Lanka, it seems to me, would be like an attempt to transplant the Swiss Alps on our island territory.

External Intervention: "Worst Case Scenario"

On this, once again, I need to quote Dr. DJ verbatim as a safeguard against an accusation of sleight-of-hand. This is what he says:

"It is not that intervention is already planned. However, the atmosphere, diplomatic (Geneva, New York), conceptual (retroactive R2P) and world opinion, is building up ? or being created ? which is not unpropitious for such intervention and in which any intervention would be readily endorsed. It certain went uncontested in 1987. The last time, Sri Lanka was able to roll back that intervention because the LTTE took on the IPKF, generating collective cognitive dissonance in Tamil Nadu which in turn led to V P Singh making and fulfilling an electoral promise to withdraw Indian troops. In any future scenario of intervention, this factor will not operate. There will be no Tamil army fighting the Indians or anyone else who may come along. There will also be not foreign troops in the Sinhala areas, and therefore no possibility of a heroic, protracted, patriotic guerrilla war of national liberation against them".

Dayan proceeds in this vein, and adds:

"I would also draw attention not only to the speculation about US military arrangements with the Maldives, but far more importantly, the supplementing of existing Indian naval air base in the South (which has the longest airstrip in the region) with the brand new airbase in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, to which India plans to transfer its top-of-the line Sukhoi SU30MKI war planes. ..."

Enough is enough; those of us who haven’t cracked our ribs are shivering in our boots! The average reader, I guess, is expected to feel, "look, this guy is such an expert in strategic cum military matters that he even knows from which base the Indian bombardment of Sri Lanka will be launched, and which aircraft will be used for the purpose". Yet, there are more than a few who would know that much of this is pure bunkum. About the military logistics of the predicted intervention, Dr. DJ should know that Delhi, if it decides (ignoring all consequences) to launch an attack of Sri Lanka, could commence operations from any or all of the 6 major air force bases in the Deccan area; that even by 2005, India had a fleet of about 50 SU30MKIs in its total operational fleet of about 800 fixed-wing military aircraft in addition to a large fleet of attack helicopters, any of which could convey to any part of Sri Lanka anything ranging from a thermonuclear bomb to a consignment of parippu. There is, in addition, the dreadful attack capacity of the Navy, and a huge arsenal of medium range surface-to-air missiles (This is published information, but not ‘Wikileaks’, available to anyone.) As to whether such an attack lies within the bounds to reality, the most persuasive answer I have come across, which cannot be reproduced here, is found in last Sunday’s instalment of the review of Dr. DJ’s magnum opus by the veteran journalist HLD Mahindapala (The Nation, May 26: p. 11).

It is mainly as a safeguard against this "worst case scenario" which, according to Dr. DJ, "Sri Lanka must make note of in its security environment and its strategic vulnerabilities", that he advocates our proceeding with the ‘Thirteenth Amendment’ with the ‘pluses’ as demanded by the "international community", its lackeys, India, and the remnants of the Eelam campaign, but not necessarily the ordinary people of Sri Lanka including the Tamils who appear to be quite content with their recently found freedom and even the post-war material advances, except when those in the local human rights industry persuade them that they ought not to be. That, of course, does not mean that the Tamil people in the north will readily abandon their primordial loyalties when it comes to voting. If it does not work in the way envisaged by Dr. DJ, well so what? He could always say with hindsight that the ‘plusses’ were inadequate or that timing was wrong, or the central government was provocative in its dealings with the NPC, or that Colombo was not pliant enough in its dealings with the West, or that the Rajapaksa regime has been too friendly with China, etc. etc.

Such explanation would, of course, be of little consolation if the suggested devolution becomes, not a compromise but an irretrievable give-away with no gains in security and internal stability, but permanent losses in respect of vulnerability to external threats. All indications both from past records as well as what could be discerned in the relevant geopolitical configurations are that, from the viewpoint of Sri Lanka’s security, it will inevitably be the latter rather than the former.

Concluded

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